I am back from a week spent with my Mum in not so sunny Somerset, one of the reasons I've been quiet since my last post. More about that further on because I want to show pics I've taken throughout the month in some vague order. I have only taken photos on my phone as I wasn't really in the mood for shooting anything much in my garden for the gazillionth time, so these are just a few things that I found or that happened along the way.
Andrea the hen 'helping' after I'd just weeded the tubs. I am down to only two hens now as the one who had scaly leg mite died, poor thing. I'm not replacing them and guess what, we just had to BUY some eggs!!! Both hens are now in full moult so have stopped laying.
And here she is pecking at maggots from the bag of bird peanuts that we found wriggling. It really annoys me when that happens as they are really expensive to buy and aren't always available, hence us usually buying several bags at a time. The hens weren't interested in eating the peanuts though, but luckily (or not) we had a nighttime visitor a few nights ago who came and scoffed them up. K spotted a fox one night just after he'd put the outside light on looking for Harry who hadn't come in. He thought it was Harry for a moment until he realised Harry didn't have such big ears and a pointy face. I'm wary about a fox getting into the garden and fear for the cats as well as the ducks, but as it happened dear Harry was safe as he'd got himself locked in the barn for the night! It was pretty cool seeing the fox though.
I spotted this Small Heath butterfly roosting on the Golden Rod at about 5pm one evening, long before we changed the clocks.
I also found this huge Fox Moth caterpillar. You can see from the photo with my hand just how big it is.
And now, something very interesting - another thing that's both exciting to see but also makes me wary about such a thing getting into the garden. This is up the far end of the pond where the stream comes in and the shallowest area of lake, so it dries up when the pond level is very low (it's down about 4 foot or more right now). Well now, what might have caused this? There was a trail of deep footprints and a big area that had been wallowed in. We conclude it must have been a wild boar, because the footprints are cloven and have sunk in very deeply compared to the other pawprints around it.
It might be best if you click on this photo to view it larger, as you can see coarse hair marks in the mud, just like a wild boar had been lying against it.
Again, if you look closer at the next photo you can see pawprints which at the time I thought either dog or fox, and now that we know that a fox got in, I'm guessing they must be fox tracks. The wild boar's tracks are much deeper.
We realised that we never repaired a hole in the fence where the fence crosses the stream, so that has now been rectified (although the fox was spotted after that was done, so must be getting in through one of the holes where the cats get out. We can't repair every bit of damaged fence wire under the hedge.)
Our 'tree man' has just been to give a quote for felling more overcrowded trees and thinks he may be able to remove the stand of alders that fell over into the pond earlier in the year. Part of it is still in water, the rest in mud too squidgy to walk on and I have no idea how deep that mud is as I don't want to lose my wellies! I guess planks to stand on is the way to go.
Piccy of the cats, though no Hallie. The lawn is how we found it when we came back from hols after it had finally rained - very blotchy. We're still awaiting the autumn rains.
Back to England, I had a lovely time, a lot of it spent eating all my favourite things! I love clotted cream and having a cream tea was so good I had to take a photo of it. K stayed at home looking after the menagerie and I flew over and my brother picked me up from Southampton airport. Sadly Flybe only use the Exeter route for a few months in the summer now and in fact there are no flights to Southampton during winter anymore. I came home on the last flight of the year. Both flights were full by the way. Conclude from that what you will.
It was gloomy most days but I did a bit of gardening for Mum and got out for a nice long walk with the husband of a friend of my Mum with his dog, which was great as it was a round trip walk that otherwise I would never have known existed. We saw dozens of pheasants. Here is a pic from the top of Mum's garden with the neighbour's Sumac tree looking really colourful.
On the way home I had a good view and the sun came out as soon as we hit France (of course!) so I took a load of photos as we were coming in to land. Love these old prop planes!
And then it was back to collecting yet more walnuts to add to the pile, and yet more huge windfall apples. I intend to stew up a load of apples and freeze them as apple sauce.
I did take a few photos of the garden with my phone. My Forest Pansy has been looking great all October, but we just had a proper white frost the other day so tons of leaves have dropped off the trees now.
And here's the pond showing how low it is, with the fallen tree just visible at the far end.
I've not been terribly in the mood for blogging - think I'm suffering from blog writer's block. It doesn't help that the depression is lurking now the gloomy weather is back, although it's mostly kept at bay by my medication. So if my posts are sporadic then that will be why. I have recently had a CT scan for my twice annual check up and everything was fine, so that's one year clear of cancer now! And I don't have a hernia which I thought I had. I do have a bulge which is why I thought I had one, but the scan just shows fat..... :-)
I have wanted to visit this garden for years, but every time we were in Somerset it was either the wrong time of year, it poured with rain or we just didn't have time. This time, finally, we made it!
We visited on 16th May, and set off in the morning in glorious sunshine, but as we passed Dartmoor and saw Exmoor off in the distance, the cloudier it got, until we arrived at our destination 90 minutes later under full, overcast grey skies. Isn't that just typical?
Well sometimes sunshine can be the enemy of the photographer so I decided to look at it that way; after all the gardens were full of colour so who cared what colour the sky was. The sun came out about an hour before closing time - typical yet again, so we enjoyed that too. We were at the gardens until closing time and I think the last car out of the car park - just goes to show what an enjoyable place this is.
The garden, now covering 65 acres, is divided into two parts with a road running between the two. The original garden was mostly planted up and developed by Lady Anne Berry during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Lady Anne gave the gardens to the RHS in 1988 along with a further plot of land (that which is across the road), which has been developed by the RHS into many gardens of different styles and a rich wealth of planting. A brief history of the garden on Wikipedia here, and further info on the website here.
The Winter Garden - lots of interesting coloured bark - I loved it!
I think it was about a week after the Cherry blossom was at its peak, but even so we had quite a magnificent display over many areas of the garden. One thing we were too early for was the Rose Garden, but you can't have it all.
The Herb, Potager and Cottage Garden
Quite ornamental too, it's every gardeners dream to have a potager like this but unless you have an army of gardeners to help you, it's pretty unlikely your veggies will ever be presented like this......
Of course there were flowers galore in there, and I was rather taken by these multicolour Wallflowers. Just gorgeous colours. I think this patch represented the Cottage Garden.
A view, one of many!
An Acer of some sort.
A Song Thrush with something for the babies in its beak.
The pond with..... not just a Moorhen but a baby too! Only the one but one is better than none. We here at Chateau Moorhen have been starved of baby pompoms these last two years. Sob.
The Orchard - there were many varieties of apple, I presume some local and heritage ones. They stole the show being in perfect full bloom.
Now what I'm going to do, because I have a lot of photos and I don't want to bore you to death, is put the rest of the photos from this visit into a Picasa/Google album and give you the link at the end. I've already whittled these photos down from 176 to 50 (!!) so if you'd like to see more, I have just captioned them where necessary but there is no more blurb from me. Believe me, if you like public gardens, it's worth looking at the rest. More importantly, it's worth visiting here yourself!
But first, I leave you with this gorgeous Robin. I have never managed to get a photo of a Robin before, but I might have guessed there would be some tame bird life around the restaurant terrace! Sure enough, there were Dunnocks, Blackbirds and Sparrows around willing to let you take their photo if you shared a few crumbs with them. Here this Robin is having a bit of my shortbread whilst we sat and enjoyed tea on the very pleasant terrace.
The moment the Robin leapt off the chair towards the crumbs!
Yummy shortbread!
For the rest of the photos, please click on this link to my album. Thank you for looking!
This year I finally managed to cross something off my bucket list. After years of talking about it and never getting around to it, usually being in England at the wrong time of year anyway, we made it to RHS Rosemoor gardens in Devon. That will be a whole post in itself as I have loads of photos, as you can probably imagine!
Our first few days staying at my Mum's in Somerset were quite warm and sunny - now that made a nice change as it usually rains when I'm in England! Of course the weather did turn, and it did rain, but overall it wasn't too bad. I made the most of taking photos in Mum's garden whilst it was nice and sunny. However I was most disappointed at the lack of butterflies, even when the sun was shining. I saw one Peacock in Mum's garden and hardly saw anything anywhere else, only a few Small Whites.
One big difference between home and this part of England is the sheep everywhere - at home it is cattle and hardly any sheep farms, just smallholders keeping their own few sheep for personal consumption. Another thing I really noticed were the amount of Hawthorn bushes due to all the blossom - the countryside seemed absolutely covered in it. We have Hawthorn at home but only here and there, which is a shame as it looks so wonderful en masse. And the third big difference is the beautiful wildflower Red Campion - it was everywhere, yet I've never noticed it here in Brittany. We only have the white variety which isn't very exciting and I think of it as an irritating weed when it appears in my flower beds!
Down the road from Mum's house - this is Dorset. She lives in the corner where Somerset, Devon and Dorset converge. We managed a few walks in the lovely countryside.
Looking towards the back of Mum's cottage.
Clockwise from top left: Japanese Maple, the pond and my brother, Geraniums that we potted up for Mum, Brunnera and low growing Phlox. We helped Mum in the garden as she can't do much any more, weeding and potting up geraniums and summer annuals.
Camassia flowers.
Aquilegia taken using the in camera effects, this is High Key.
The Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum) in flower, although this isn't the most amount of blossom it has had before. High Key again, because the blooms are pinker than this.
A Common Red Damselfly came to say hello when we were sitting at the garden table and seemed quite settled on my fleece.
A slow worm living in the compost bin. It has what looks like an old injury, a chunk taken out of it which looks healed up. The gardener was by at the time doing some preliminary work prior to replacing a rotten fence, and he said it was probably rat damage as there was a rat living round there. Fascinating to see as I have never seen one so close up before.
We got out for an afternoon birding at the Seaton wetlands on the Axe estuary. It was only half an hour from Mum's house and a good place for birding, with many hides, and good marked tracks and signposts, so easy to find. However the weather left a lot to be desired and by the end of the afternoon it had started to drizzle so we got fed up and called it a day. It wasn't the best birding day I've ever had out but was nice to go somewhere different, and what birds you see is usually luck anyway.
Clockwise: A friendly Robin, think that's a Curlew (or a Whimbrel?), a Greenfinch on a feeder right next to a hide, and a Pheasant underneath the feeders.
A Reed Bunting was singing on a cable in front of the hide.
It's really true what they say about British Robins being more friendly than their European counterparts. I have never got a photo of a Robin before, other than distant blurs. Yet I had about five Robins coming close enough whilst we were in England to get reasonable photos of them!
Even the Mallards are tamer.....
Swans with cygnets at the Borrow Pit, a freshwater pond near the estuary.
A view of the estuary later on when the tide was coming in.
At the other end of the scale we did things like this - went shopping! This was in John Lewis at Cribbs Causeway near Bristol - but we both decided that apart from John Lewis there wasn't anything here that there wasn't in Taunton, so not worth the extra travelling time. However I do like a wander around department stores as there are none in north west France (unless they have any in Nantes). Rennes has a small Galeries Lafayette in the centre of town but we'd have to go to Paris for a proper department store fix.
I got to eat at the all you can eat buffet at Pizza Hut. How I miss deep pan pizza!
Finally it was time to head home - driving into the bowels of the ship (Bretagne), behind a classic car of some sort? No I don't know what it is!
There was a delay leaving Portsmouth so I was able to get this sunset shot over the harbour.
And to finish off, a meal in the 'posh' restaurant of the Bretagne. Nice food but I'm not happy with the silly face I am pulling!
So that was Angleterre 2016. Soooo much better than going in the autumn! We really had a great time and staying put in one place for two weeks made a difference too, as we had time to do more things with less of a rush. I plan to go back in the autumn to see Mum as she is not well (breast cancer), but I'll go on my own and fly over.
